- Mary Magicc
- The Toxic Consultancy
- Taxonomies of Toxicities
24 pages
A4
Design: Seth Weiner
In the “Toxic Consultancy” workshop offered to organisations, Mary Maggic moves between modes of toxicity: from material and environmental to emotional and interpersonal, and guides participants in a toxic witch-hunt. A discursive exercise in scavenging and naming the poisons of daily life that will then be used to create new taxonomies. They ask: “Can our newly re-imagined taxonomies resist the violent process of othering? How do materialisms and subjectivities already resist being categorized?” The etymologies of “taxonomy" and “toxicity" are both derived from the Greek roots “tactics” and "toxikon” respectively for uses in times of war. Today, taxonomies and toxicities produce a different kind of violence that extends from material to subjective realms, from the geopolitical to the interpersonal. While we all live in a profoundly polluted world, we remain trapped in outdated notions of binary gender and normative bodies that ignore the malleability of life itself.
Mary Maggic’s contribution brings a reflection on the actually existing toxic relationships in environmental and interpersonal domains, and their relations within capitalism, the toxic fungal growth supported by conditions of capitalism: a system that pits individuals against each other, as system that overproduces toxicity in the physical environment as well as in social and interpersonal spheres.